'There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe'So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . . 'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on SundayPeter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

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About the Author

Novelist, biographer and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. From a working-class family in west London, he got a scholarship to Cambridge and went on to Yale. He was literary editor of the Spectator and then chief book reviewer for the Sunday Times for many years. He has written over a dozen novels as well as acclaimed biographies of Eliot and Dickens, and a history of London.

Reviews

Eighteenth- and 20th-century London merge as Nicholas Hawksmoor, C.I.D., investigates a series of murders whose only connection is locale18th-century churches constructed by Nicholas Dyer. Resisting modern, more systematic methods of detection, Hawksmoor interprets the historic connection between these places, old murders and new, slayers and slain, murderers and pursuers, defying time, religion, and reason itself. Despite exacting re-creation of Dyer's London and careful mirroring of 18th-century people and places in the 20th century, the novel lacks a focus that would make a point behind the wealth of detail. As it is, tantalizing symmetries, provocative discussions of architecture, debates on ancient and modern lead nowhere and frustrate the reader. Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.

Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed * Independent on Sunday * Extraordinary, amazing, vivid, convincing. [Ackroyd's] view of life questions the role not just of the novel but of art and history, memory, time and much else * Financial Times * A novel remarkable for [its] power, ingenuity and subtlety * London Review of Books *